International Journal of Economics, Commerce and Management United Kingdom ISSN 2348 0386 Vol. VII, Issue 4, April 2019 http://ijecm.co.uk/ RETHINKING MENTORSHIP AND ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT IN NIGERIAN ACADEMIA Valerie A. Onyia Department of Business Administration & Marketing, School of Management Sciences, Babcock University, Nigeria
[email protected] Olalekan U. Asikhia Department of Business Administration & Marketing, School of Management Sciences, Babcock University, Nigeria Olive U. Egbuta Department of Business Administration & Marketing, School of Management Sciences, Babcock University, Nigeria Grace O. Makinde Department of Business Administration & Marketing, School of Management Sciences, Babcock University, Nigeria Abstract The paper aims to elucidate the relationship between mentoring dimensions and organizational commitment of academic staff in Nigerian private universities. It proposes that effective mentorship aids employee retention by enhancing organizational commitment. Using the responses of 315 academic staff and in-depth interviews of professors and junior lecturers of six selected private universities in South-West Nigeria, this study added to literature by exploring mentoring as an emerging leadership development program and its concomitant relationship with organisational commitment for human capacity building in Nigerian universities. The paper opted for a cross-sectional survey research design and using the open-ended approach of grounded theory, including 12 in-depth interviews with academic staff representing professors Licensed under Creative Common Page 823 ©Author(s) as mentors and junior lecturers as mentees having experienced either formal or informal mentoring. The paper provides empirical insights and results revealed that mentoring dimensions had a significant weak positive relationship with employee’s organizational commitment (r=0.121, 0.150, 0.159, 0.188, 0.203, p< 0.05, N=315).